


Fear

by flerovium



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 02:19:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5850124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flerovium/pseuds/flerovium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oikawa has an anxiety attack after practice; Iwaizumi comforts him</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a really bad day and wrote this in literally an hour and didn't proofread. Sorry for any and all mistakes, but I probably won't ever look through this properly to fix them.

The feeling of fear was not a novel sensation to Oikawa Tooru. He’d felt it many times before in his life. When he was six and fell down the stairs in front of his aunt and uncle’s house, he was afraid of hurting himself until he got up and realized he was fine. When he was nine and dropped his new volleyball he’d been given from his parents and it rolled down a hill to get washed away into a river, he was afraid of their disappointment until they just shook their heads and told him that accidents happen. When he was eleven he was afraid for his friend Iwaizumi, who had hurt himself when they were running around in the park together and fell, until he came back from the hospital only complaining that his arm was itchy under a lime green cast. When he was fourteen and he was afraid of being outshone by a first year setter on his same team, already with enough skill to come close to catching up to him, until he won the Best Setter award and was reassured of his stance.

So no, Oikawa Tooru was not unfamiliar with fear or panic, and he was always able to see an end to it. But the way he was feeling now, he didn’t know what to do. His day had been going normally, although with a few downs. Sure, he had forgotten about a biology assignment due that morning, but that had happened before. Sure the volleyball team’s coach suddenly decided to crank up their training regimen to prepare for the inter-high, but that had happened before too. And sure, his classmates had been particularly rowdy and annoying, and he was beginning to stress about writing university applications, and he needed to get more service hours in if he wanted to pass the year but didn’t have the time for it.

In Oikawa’s mind, none of that was reason enough to be feeling the way he was.

Maybe it was simply the addition of stress, over and over and over throughout the week. Maybe it was the result of another failure on his part, a failure to keep himself together. Either way, whatever the reason, Oikawa felt like Iwaizumi reminding him, when they were alone in the clubroom after practice, that they had an English test tomorrow was not a good enough reason for a complete and utter breakdown.

And yet, the second he said those few choice words, Oikawa completely broke. It felt like everything that had been happening to him was a drop of water in a cup inside his mind, and with that final fateful drip, the cup overflowed, spilling its muddled contents of stress and anxiety into his head, drowning out every other thought.

Oikawa felt his back slam against the lockers, the ridges of the ventilation slats digging into his skull, before he slid pathetically to the floor, curling his knees into his chest and burying his face in them. He hardly noticed the sobs wracking his own body and shaking him to the core.

Everything around him faded into nonexistence. His ears became deaf to any sound, his eyes pressed so tightly to his knees that they were beginning to hurt, but he didn’t really feel that either. All he could feel was the fear. The purest, most intense panic he had ever felt.

It wasn’t like before, when it had a clear cause and a simple solution. Perhaps what scared him the most was that he didn’t even know himself what was making him so afraid. All he knew was that he was, and it didn’t feel like it would end.

Suddenly, every bad thing he’d ever thought about himself came crashing through his previously numbed conscious thought. Every inadequacy, every insecurity, every doubt he’d ever had, it all came down on him like an avalanche, solidifying his state of physical and mental paralysis. He could hardly breathe, his heart was pounding in his chest, so loud it penetrated his deafened ears.

This was a kind of fear completely unknown to Oikawa Tooru, and its lack of a proper source only made it all the more difficult to deal with in his usual critical methods.

After what felt to him like an eternity, though it was probably no more than half a minute, something broke past the barrier in his head. He felt a hand press softly to his violently shaking shoulder, then Iwaizumi’s calm voice.

“Are you okay?”

Oikawa didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t think he was okay, but why wouldn’t he be? He wasn’t injured, or in much physical pain, but he certainly didn’t feel like he could say yes.

He chose to ignore the question.

“Do you want me to stay with you?”

At that he nodded. Despite his shame at being seen in such a state, he trusted his best friend, and although he was confused about pretty much everything going on at the moment, he knew that he needed Iwaizumi’s presence.

“Do you want me to give you a hug?”

He hesitated at that. A hug? Iwaizumi wasn’t usually the type to initiate that. But the more he thought about it, the hand on his shoulder felt nice, if it was anyone else he would have shoved them off, so he nodded again.

Without any further words, Iwaizumi’s arms wrapped gently around his shoulders, one hand immobile, grounding, the other running over his hair again and again, quietly soothing him. As they sat there, the storm and chaos in Oikawa’s head gradually began to calm until after he wasn’t sure how long, it became nothing more than a lull, everything going completely quiet. The thoughts lingered, but no longer were they pounding at him, trying to break him down.

All of a sudden, he was exhausted. He hadn’t moved at all, yet his entire body felt like dead weight and his head felt like it was carrying something as heavy as a rock, rather than just his brain.

“Are you okay?”

This time, Oikawa found himself able to nod. He wasn’t feeling on top of anything, but he had calmed. The hand on his shoulder began to rub it softly.

“Do you want to get up, or do you want to sit here for a little longer?”

Still not feeling capable of proper speech, Oikawa just stood without answering, and Iwaizumi followed, wrapping him in another tight embrace.

“Since when do you know how to do this so well?” Oikawa muttered into his shoulder.

“My little sister gets anxiety attacks like that a lot. I learned through experience, and I got good at recognizing them.”

They eventually left the clubroom, walking quietly, though a bit closer than normal, towards their neighbourhood. Oikawa’s parents were away that week, visiting some extended family, so Iwaizumi offered to stay with him that night to make sure he would be okay, and Oikawa agreed without hesitation.

What he did to deserve such a friend, he would have no idea.

**Author's Note:**

> Pbtbtbtbtbt sorry if this is shitty


End file.
